Cancer Risk

SMALL WHITE precancerous patches that may appear in the mouths of people who use smokeless tobacco can be eliminated by giving up the habit, says a report in the Journal of the American Dental Association. Between 4 and 7 percent of people with these patches, called leukoplakia, develop oral cancer. One patient, who had extensive leukoplakia after using smokeless tobacco 10 to 12 hours a day for 20 years, had all the patches disappear after stopping the use of tobacco, said Dr. John Giunta of the Tufts University School of Dental Medicine.

The Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention offers a personalized method for determining and lowering an individual's risk of the 12 most common cancers in the United States. About half of all cancer cases in the country can be prevented for those who take basic steps to reduce their risk, the site says. Your Cancer Risk provides risk-reduction strategies for these cancers: breast, prostate, lung, colon, bladder, melanoma, uterine, kidney, pancreatic, ovarian, cervical and stomach. Address: www.hsph.

Male pot smokers beware: Your seemingly harmless habit may be increasing your risk of developing the most dangerous forms of testicular cancer . A new study, published Monday on the website of the medical journal Cancer , reports that men who have testicular cancer are twice as likely to have smoked marijuana before they were diagnosed than control subjects. The association existed only for nonseminomas, the more dangerous form of testicular cancer that is harder to treat.

WASHINGTON -- Women with a family history of colon cancer can reduce their risk by taking vitamins containing folic acid, researchers said today. Popping a multivitamin with folic acid every day eased the risk for women who had a parent or sibling with colon cancer, the team at Harvard University found. People whose parent or sibling had colon cancer have double the risk of developing the disease.

People who have organ transplants face a much higher risk of developing cancer because their immune systems are weakened by drugs that stop their bodies from rejecting the new organs, a study concludes.The research of more than 60,000 organ recipients who had transplants in the last 20 years showed that they are three times more likely to develop some form of cancer than the general population. For certain types of cancer, however, the risk increases as much as 500 times.Two of the most prevalent cancers, Kaposi's sarcoma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, also are prevalent among victims of AIDS.

Regular aspirin use - already touted for its heart-protective effects - may cut the risk of developing certain cancers, including those of the lung, colon and breast, a new study suggests. The 12-year study of more than 12,000 adults found that overall cancer risk was about 17 percent lower in those who had taken aspirin in the month before the study began, compared with those who did not take the popular painkiller. The authors of the study, Dina Schreinemachers and Richard Everson of the Environmental Protection Agency's Health Effects Research Lab, said aspirin might induce changes in immune-system function and urged more research.

The link between dietary fat and cancer is not as clear as once thought, says an American Medical Association report issued Thursday.Dietary fat seems to increase the risk of cancer because it adds excessive calories, and because of a specific fatty acid called linoleic acid, which makes up nearly half the fatty acids in corn oil, says a report by the AMA's Council on Scientific Affairs.Studies on rodents have shown that a low-calorie diet prevents cancer, and that the linoleic acid in fat promotes the growth of certain types of cancer.

Dutch gynecologists have developed a new birth control pill designed for women in the high-risk category for breast cancer and other diseases. Arie Haspels, a professor at Utrecht University Hospital, said Thursday the new pill was made of menatoline, a hormone derived from the human pineal gland. Most birth control pills contain the hormone estrogen, which has been determined by scientists to cause breast cancer or thrombosis in some women. The new pill has to be tested on 5,000 patients before it can appear on the market.

Women who breast-feed their babies reduce significantly their chances of getting breast and ovarian cancers, researchers said Wednesday.''Having babies protects you from these cancers; breast-feeding protects even more so, significantly more so,'' said Dr. Nancy C. Lee, an epidemiologist from the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.The discovery was made when doctors analyzed raw data from a 1982 national CDC study on cancer risk and birth control pills.Lee said an analysis of the data showed those women who nursed babies had significantly lower rates of breast and ovarian cancers than did women who had children but did not breast-feed them.

Description: Two Johns Hopkins University scientists were awarded one of the National Cancer Institute's first grants intended to answer what it calls "provocative questions" in cancer research. They will receive more than $500,000 over a year as they study how and why infections can cause certain types of cancer and how cancer spreads. Other "provocative questions" focus on how obesity contributes to cancer risk, why some cancers can be cured by chemotherapy alone, and why some tumors become malignant after years of being benign.

OK, so maybe today isn't the perfect day to quit smoking . For years, the experts were preaching that any day was a good day to quit, and they had annual campaigns encouraging people to give up the habit. The campaigns raised awareness, and they led many smokers away from tobacco. Now, though, the experts are beginning to recognize that to be successful in quitting, many smokers need to do some planning. Most of us can't just toss away that pack of cigarettes, never to light up again.

Dear Pharmacist: My sister and mother have both had breast cancer , so far I'm OK (but obviously worried). What is your No. 1 recommendation for me . — K.B., Orlando Dear K.B.: When it comes to breast health, weight matters the most in my opinion. Another important factor is hormone balance. Flabby abs and thighs can increase production of cancer -causing hormones , including estrogen. Clinical trials often conclude that estrogen promotes cell proliferation in breast tumors.

According to studies published last week in The Lancet, taking a daily dose of aspirin can reduce the risk of cancer . The new studies, led by Peter Rothwell of Britain's Oxford University , found that low-dose aspirin has a short-term benefit in preventing cancer and can reduce the risk of some cancers by as much as 50 percent. For further clarification, we turned to Dr. Howard Kaufman, director of the Rush University Cancer Center at Rush University Medical Center . His primary research interest is melanoma and tumor immunotherapy, and he has more than 120 articles and other publications to his credit.

By Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times / For the Booster Shots blog, March 19, 2012

Diabetes affects more than 25 million Americans. New medications and strategies to treat the disease are greatly needed. But the jury is still out on the experimental medication dapagliflozin. The medication looks to have significant benefits and risks, according to a study published Monday. Dapagliflozin is being developed by Bristol-Myers-Squibb Co. in partnership with AstraZeneca . It represents a new class of diabetes medications called selective renal sodium glucose contransporter inhibitors.

In a finding that strengthens the link between environmental pollutants and rising rates of breast cancer , new research finds that women whose diets contain higher levels of cadmium are at greater risk of developing breast cancer than those who ingest less of the industrial chemical in their food. Cadmium, a heavy metal long identified as a carcinogen, leaches into crops from fertilizers and when rainfall or sewage sludge deposit it onto farmland. Whole grains, potatoes, other vegetables and shellfish are key dietary sources of cadmium, which also becomes airborne as a pollutant when fossil fuels are burned, and is likely inhaled as well as ingested.

Men are at higher risk of getting 32 out of 35 cancers, according to an international study, which further suggests that the greatest reason for the gap lies in biology. "Simply being male is responsible for a huge percentage of our worldwide cancer burden," said Ellen Chang, research scientist at the Cancer Prevention Institute of California and co-author of the paper, which appeared in this week's European Journal of Epidemiology. For 15 cancers, the risk for men is twice that for women.

When asked what causes skin cancer, most Americans blame the sun. But more research is finding that cigarette smoking is another leading cause. Researchers at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa looked at data from 698 subjects recruited from Florida medical clinics. They found that those who had skin cancer (not the mole kind), were more likely to have smoked than those who didn't have skin cancer. This was particularly true for women, according to the study published in a recent issue of Cancer Causes Control . The study was about half men and women, including 383 who had skin cancer and 315 who didn't.